


Love (It Is the Way We Begin)

by ScaryScarecrows



Series: Garage Tapes [20]
Category: Gotham City Garage (Comics)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, He's better now, Jason isn't a gang leader yet, he's been out of his grave for like two hours he's still a baby, it's Jason he did die y'know, mentions of child death, post-resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23569282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScaryScarecrows/pseuds/ScaryScarecrows
Summary: And, well, Dove’s always had a soft spot for strays, hasn’t she.“Hey, honey—”“M-Ma?”WHAT.
Series: Garage Tapes [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1033470
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57





	Love (It Is the Way We Begin)

**Author's Note:**

> MAN, this plague is starting to wear me down. Every DAY it’s new bullshit. So, again, y’all, stay inside if you can, wear a mask if you can’t. (I put TWO patterns-sewing and non-sewing-on my Tumblr! Use them! Share them!)  
> Enjoy this utterly shameless self-indulgence. It was easier to finish a half-done thing than it was to write a whole new chapter of something else. Brought to you by lavender Earl Grey and snickerdoodle mug cake. Title from Civil Twilight’s ‘Save Yourself’.

It’s wet. Cold. There’s been talk, here and there, about Luthor getting them to stick in an eternal springtime, with only a little drizzle here and there for variety.

Dove couldn’t care less. Her son is dead. Fuck Luthor and his eternal springtime and everything he  **fucking** stands for.

She’s not staying. There’s ways out, there’s always been ways out, and Penguin agreed that she might be…useful…stationed out in the Freescape. She’s more than willing to be useful. She wants that bastard dead.

It’s been six months. Six horrible months since an official knocked on her door and told her, point-blank, to come and identify Jason’s corpse.

They didn’t tell her why. She knows anyway-to prove a point, to cow people into submission. They told her they didn’t know anything, that they’d look into it. The Bat’s barely-hidden smirk had proven that false.

She wants Luthor dead, but she wants the Bat’s head on her goddamn wall, and she’ll make it happen. One way or another.

She’s not packed. Next month. Can’t pack too soon, that’s suspicious. So here she is, in a too-large, too-quiet apartment, tea forgotten on her side table and TV flashing a muted cartoon. She doesn’t know what it is. Everything’s so heavily censored anymore, it’s not like she’s got choices.

There’s a noise in the hall. Shuffling. Scrabbling. What on…?

She gets up, joints cracking, and makes her way to the door. The light’s out (cheap-ass landlord, or maybe it’s later than she thought) and she figures fuck it. If it’s the Grim Reaper, he’s six months late. Men never ask for directions…

It is not the Grim Reaper. It’s a boy,

**God how old is he can’t be much older than…**

muddy and shivering and half-curled on himself. And, well, Dove’s always had a soft spot for strays, hasn’t she.

“Hey, honey—”

“M-Ma?”

WHAT.

The boy pulls his head up and that’s not possible. She’s. She’s dreaming, or outright crazy.

Jason coughs, a glob of soil-filled saliva sticking to his lips, and whispers, “I don’t feel good.”

He pitches forward. She catches him and he’s  **solid** . Freezing and wet, but he’s solid.

Crazy she may be, but she’s not…she can’t…she’s not letting him d-suffer from hypothermia in his own hallway.

She drags him inside, kicks the door shut, and half-helps, half-hauls him into the shower, suddenly grateful for that stool she got after nearly braining herself shaving.

“Jay—” He whines and she realizes her voice is high and loud. “Jason?” God…how…? “Jayjay--” He shivers again and she turns on the water, leans forward to wrap her arms around him. Solid. Cold, but there’s…there’s an underlying warmth to him. A pulse. “Oh, my God—”

He jerks and heaves and she jumps back just as he spits up a mouthful of gritty bile. The shower washes it down, but he stays slumped over, hands dangling between his knees.

“O-okay, baby, let’s getcha cleaned up, okay?”

“I think m’sick.”

**God, don’t let him remember…**

“Warm shower’ll help,” she says, voice still high and she doesn’t mean it to be, but… “You’re okay, Jay, you’re okay--my  **God** —”

Um…

Shoes. Wet socks are nobody’s friend.

The shoes are beat to hell, scuffed and torn, and she’s just starting to wonder, really wonder, about the  **how** when she looks up a few inches and sees his hands. They’re bloody, nails broken (or, in a few cases, torn clean off) and there’s splinters jutting out of them like broken teeth.

**Jesus Christ--**

He doesn’t seem to notice, not even when she pulls one out from between his knuckles. He’s still awake, though, as she finds out when she reaches up to adjust the spray so it’s not hitting him in the face.

“M’tired,” he mumbles. A worm wriggles in his hair and drops to the tiles. Dove puts it aside with a shudder.

“We’ll get you to bed after this, okay? Just. Just stay still.” He slumps back against the wall, eyes closed and head plunked down so his chin’s touching his chest. Okay. Splinters first, so she can get him out of his jacket and shirt. “Okay, sweetheart, just be still…Jesus Christ…”

He doesn’t answer.

The splinters come out easy. She resolutely does not think about what they are, or how they got there. Once they’re gone, she stands back up, curses this goddamn suit (what was she thinking?), and starts easing the torn, sopping jacket off his shoulders. He’s floppy and honestly, it’s a relief. He hadn’t been, when she’d…

He doesn’t even flinch when she pulls the sleeves over his hands. The shivering picks up, though, and she adjusts the shower head again.

Shivering’s good, right? She’s pretty sure it’s when someone  **stops** shivering that there’s a problem.

“Okay, sweetheart…anything feel broken? Can you breathe okay?”

She remembers, Then, that his…his neck. They’d broken his neck, and that had been what finally…everything else they’d done, and that had ended it.

He seems all right now (she will freak out later, but right now it’s useless and she  **will** keep her shit together). He nods, anyway, short and…and normal.

“M’tired,” he mumbles again. “I wanna go to bed.”

“Real soon,” she promises, turns her attention to his shirt buttons. Screw this. She’s starting a movement for funeral sweatpants. “Real soon, I’m just gonna get you cleaned up, okay?”

He’s starting to warm up. Still floppy, though, just moves wherever she nudges him. She’s just about done when he swallows and rasps, “M’sorry.”

She thinks back, or tries to. Had she been angry with him? She can’t remember now, and it doesn’t matter.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she soothes, and finishes with the last button before straightening back up. There’s. There’s bruises, and scabs that she remembers were…not scabs…the last time she saw him. His ribs look all right, too, and she remembers that two of them had been so badly broken they’d… “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Jay—”

He’s shaking his head, eyes wide open and filling up with tears.

“I should’ve taken the bus like I s-said I was gonna but I  **didn’t** a-and—”

“Sh-sh-sh.” She hugs him (shaking warm  **alive** Jesus Christ) and scrubs her fingers through his hair, catching clumps of mud. “Don’t be sorry, Jayjay, there’s nothin’ to be-shh, shh…I gotcha…”

He flings his arms around her, wet fabric meeting wet fabric with a  **glop!** , and chokes out, “I didn’t wanna die.”

Oh. He does remember. That son of a bitch Luthor-and the Bat-he’s a kid, he can’t even drive, for fuck’s sake…

“Shh.” She’s trying really, really hard not to cry. She’s not doing a good job of it. “You’re all right now, baby, it’s over. I gotcha.”

He feels so fragile. She’s scared to squeeze too hard, but at the same time she doesn’t want to let go of him. She doesn’t think she’ll ever let go of him again.

He’s still hanging on, still shivering, and all she can think is that the last time he was so goddamn  **still** . Not now; shivering aside, he’s jerking with choked-off sobs and his heart’s beating like a rabbit’s, and he’s gripping the back of her t-shirt like it’s a kid’s security blanket. She’s sure his hands are bleeding again (did they ever stop?), but she’d sooner cut her nose off than make him let go.

His hair’s starting to drip mud, though, and she pulls back enough to take the shower head down.

“Close your eyes, kiddo.”

He does, swallowing hard and sniffling, and she starts rumpling his hair to try and dislodge the dirt clumps.

“M-Ma?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t wanna go.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” Where is that scalp brush…there! “Tell me if this’s too rough.”

He ducks his head and reaches up to cling to the edge of her shirt.

“Feels nice,” he mumbles, voice thick. Then, “Promise you’re not mad at me?”

She starts sobbing into his hair. She’ll never be mad at him again, never-not-once, if that means he’ll get to stay, honest to God she won’t--

As much as she’d like to just...just hold him, this isn’t cleaning him up and he’s shaking even harder now that his shirt’s half-off. She forces herself to woman up, as much as she can with tears and snot dripping down her damn face, and sits up.

“No, Jay,” she says, and so it’s only half-intelligible. So what? “I’m not mad at you. Let’s. Let’s just getcha rinsed off, huh?”

He doesn’t answer, just clings to the hem of her shirt. How--no. No. Don’t question it, just be grateful, that’s all. If she’s crazy, well, maybe there’s happiness in insanity, it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter  **it doesn’t matter.**

Barring a few strays, the...the sp... **those** seem to be confined to his hands, at least, leaving them puffy and raw. But there’s still...there’s other marks. Injuries, from...from what they did. Raw skin on his wrists and ankles (restraints). A pink, newly(?)-healed scar on his chest (broken rib, punctured the skin, Penguin’s got--). Nothing on his neck, and when she reaches back to make sure the mud’s gone, it doesn’t...it feels all right. No sign of a break.

“Okay, sweet boy,” she breathes, shuts the water off and reaches back for a towel. She’s gonna need one in a second, but that can wait. “You stay here, and I’m gonna get you pajamas, okay?” He’s still clinging to her shirt, even when she wraps him in the towel, but he looks up when she cups his cheek. “Jay?”

“‘Jamas?”

“Yeah. I’ll be right back, I promise, we’ll getcha dressed and wrap your hands up.”

“‘Kay.”

She snags the other towel when she speedwalks (don’t run, the neighbors--) out the door, wraps her hair up, and sets a record for ‘fastest time changing from wet sweats to dry ones’ before opening the door to Jason’s room.

After...when they told her he wasn’t coming home, she’d spent about a week in here. There’s a vague memory of Ollie or Charlie-she can’t remember which-bringing soup and water, but otherwise that period’s a horrible blur. There were tears, she knows that, remembers curling up on his bed with his old stuffed dimetrodon and begging every religious figure she could name to  _ please please please give me my baby boy back he’s a kid just please-- _

But the week had passed, and she hadn’t come in for a month after that, thinking, maybe, that if she didn’t open the door, that was proof that he was asleep, that he’d stumble out at half-past noon and make some horrifying eggroll-leftover pizza-deli ham-sandwich.

The next time she’d come in, it had been with two...well, murder’s such an ugly word. Vengeful homicides? Two deaths under her belt.

She hasn’t changed anything, which means the navy sweats and that ratty gray shirt proclaiming,  _ Bucky, Take the Wheel! _ are right where he left them, in the top shelf of his dresser.

Jason’s also right where she left him, slumped on the stool and shivering in the towel. He’s still pliable, not much help when she hauls him out of the shower. Dressing him is, she supposes, rather like dressing a large rag doll, but that perks him up a little more.

“What day is it?”

“October ninth.”

Okay...there’s...yes, there’s gauze under the sink. Okay.

“Almost done, baby, let’s just wrap your hands up and then you can go to bed.”

“Hrm.”

Wrapping, be it presents or people, is not something she’s ever been good at. Miraculously, he doesn’t appear to have broken anything-like there’d be much she can do about it, anyway-but yeah, this could be neater. But it’s  _ fine _ , it’s  _ enough _ , and maybe...maybe in the morning she’ll call…

Later. Later.

Jason’s dozing off when she finally straightens up, spine popping. Jesus. All at once, ignoring the bandages on his hands and a few small cuts on his face and neck, it’s like nothing happened. He looks the same as he ever did; gangly and awkward because he’d been in the middle of a growth spurt, hair almost too-long because he’d insisted that was the  _ style _ , freckles still just visible on his nose and across his cheeks, but fading more every day. 

If she touches him, will he disappear?

“Jay?” She reaches over, fingers ghosting along his collarbone before gripping his shoulder. Warm. Solid. “Jason?”

“Bed?”

“Bed,” she tells him, and he manages to stand up, swaying on his feet. His head’s still slumped forward and she bites down on the urge to reach out and nudge his chin up. This isn’t new. He always shuffled along like a...well, like a zombie...when he was really tired, even as a little boy. This has nothing to do with anything they did to him. “C’mon, honey.”

He’s quiet, as he squirms under the covers, but he looks more awake than he has all night.

“M’gonna wake up, aren’t I?”

She’s not going to shut the light off just yet. Call it intuition, or maybe just the unwillingness to cross the room and hit the switch, but she’s not going to shut the light off.

“‘Course.” She won’t entertain any other idea. “‘Course you will.”

“Promise?”

And just like that, he’s eleven, sick with the measles and scared to death (and so is she, she’s never been more afraid in her life). This, this isn’t new.

“Scoot,” she says, nudges him over so she can sit next to him. “I gotcha, okay? You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna wake up ridiculously late ‘cause it’ll be Saturday and spend half the afternoon with bedhead.” He yawns and rolls over, works the blankets up over his shoulders and makes a small noise when she starts petting his head. “You need anything?”

“M’tired. N’m’muscles hurt.”

Yeah. Yeah, she’s...she’s not surprised.

“Go to sleep, Jayjay. You’ll wake up, I promise.”

“‘Kay…”

Maybe she’s crazy, or dreaming, or...or something else. But it doesn’t matter. It’s been six months, she’s killed five men and she will, on God, add the Bat to that count. But...he can wait. For now.

That said, if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay away from her. And if he lays a finger, a single finger, on Jason, she’ll rip it off and choke him with it, in a heartbeat.

And that’s a promise.

THE END


End file.
